In Taylor We Trust
People tend to think I’m joking when I cite Taylor Swift alongside J.R.R. Tolkien, Jodi Picoult and Aaron Sorkin as one of my literary influences, but I can assure you, I am not. Let me tell you why.
Like most “Swifties”, I can claim a fantasy best-friendship with her since the early 2000’s and her music has been the soundtrack to my life ever since. Because of her unapologetic frankness, searing honesty and uncensored vulnerability she has an unmatched ability to write a song based on everything that has ever happened to a person. While some still think this means it’s all heartbreak and revenge on exes, her collected works show a far richer diversity than that, and she’s far savvier and more complex than the man-eating pop princess she’s been made out to be for so long.
“… stole my tortured heart, left all these broken parts, told me I’m better off, but I’m not.”
My top-rated albums (and those of my husband, but you didn’t hear that from me) are the two “lockdown” albums: Folklore and Evermore. These are much softer, more of an acoustic style and more deeply atmospheric than her previous work, playing almost as concept albums. For the first time she creates two fictional characters, Betty and James, and tells us the story of their relationship through the songs, interspersed with a few other gems such as my personal favourite, The Last Great American Dynasty.
However, when you’re feeling wronged, you can do no better than the Reputation album. This was the moment in her career when she threw off the shackles of expectation and judgement (as much as a woman ever can), stuck two fingers up to the industry, and used her music to warn everybody that things were going to work a little differently from here on out. Her earlier pop anthems such as Love Story and Never Getting Back Together or the falling-in-love-soundtrack of the Lover album are good for lightening the mood a little and reminding us that the ups and downs of life do pay off sometimes. At home we joke that I shout to my husband, ‘This one is about us’, almost every time a different Swift song comes out of one of our assorted speakers.
“I felt a hole, like this, never before, and ever since.”
Despite all this, I never expected to see her perform live. I was priced out of it for one thing, had no one to go with for another, and even if the first two hadn’t been true, I’d have had more luck finding an honest Tory politician than getting hold of tickets. However, as Taylor herself could have told me, my “magnetic force of a man” still held a few surprises up his sleeve.
“I’ve been the archer, I’ve been the prey. Who could ever leave me, darlin’? Well, who could stay?”
So, I found myself one day off work, sweating in my pjs, refreshing my laptop screen with enough frequency to give me an RSI and staring at the countdown on it through tear-filled eyes. ‘If you’re ever going to see her live,’ he’d said, ‘the Eras Tour is the time to do it.’ I had been given a budget and the promise of his attendance, and now I was doing my best impression of a love-sick teen (at the age of 31) and begging the universe for mercy. The first attempt was a bust. I was trying at home, Simon at work and neither of us got anywhere near the front of the queue before the tickets had sold out. Day two was even worse. I got to the front, had GREAT tickets, and then the website crashed and threw me out. Day three … well … from the number of sobbing voicemails left on family members’ phones, it was pretty common knowledge that we were in. Wembley 2024, here we come.
It was almost a year before the weekend was upon us and we arrived in London, me decked out in blue glitter, pink shoes and a dozen friendship bracelets, him panicking that I was too hot/cold/tired/hungry/thirsty to be having the time of my life. But I was. We were. And it was a life experience I’ll never forget. In large part that is because my husband did such an incredible job of showing up for me, never complaining about the heat, the noise or the songs he didn’t like, never failing to find me food/a loo/anything else I may have needed. He’s been there for enough of my highs and lows now to know that Taylor has always been there too.
But credit where credit is most definitely due – Ms Swift puts on a hell of a show. 3 1/2hrs of dance routines, light sequences, costumes that on their own must have cost more than I’ve earned in my life so far, and a staggering ability to make every one of the 70,000+ fans in the stadium feel like they were the only one in the room with her. I squealed with everyone else when her mum strolled out to the VIP area, hugging fans as she went, I waved at her boyfriend when he left the stage after his Eras acting debut, and I cried and danced through every track.
“If I’m dead to you, why are you at the wake, cursing my name, wishing I’d stayed?”
As a rule, I’m a country girl, I don’t “do” pop, but Taylor had me at Fearless because of her storytelling, her lyrics, her ability to put into words exactly what I was feeling when my ex had a baby with someone else, when my Gran got ill, when I realised I was going to propose to my (now) husband. We, along with gazillions of others I’ll grant you, truly have grown up together, and if I ever write a sentence that touches someone in the way so many of her lyrics have touched me, I’ll consider myself a success.